Incomplete State-Building in Central Asia

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Introduction: The State as Social Practice

   • Viktoria Akchurina

   Pages 1-7

3. The Incomplete State: Fifty Shades of Failure

   • Viktoria Akchurina

   Pages 9-39

4. Understanding State-Building in Central Asia

   • Viktoria Akchurina

   Pages 41-64

5. Follow the Water: Soviet Legacy as Cross-Border Societal Interdependence

   • Viktoria Akchurina

   Pages 65-118

6. Impact of External Actors on States and Societies

   • Viktoria Akchurina

   Pages 119-201

7. When Elites Meet: The Struggle for Power and Its Social Meaning

   • Viktoria Akchurina

   Pages 203-277

8. Conclusion: Keeping It Social

   • Viktoria Akchurina

   Pages 279-293

9. Back Matter

   Pages 295-342

   PDF

This book is about transformation of the state and an incomplete state-building. It defies the transitology assumption of continuity, linearity and dichotomy of formal and informal in the transformation of the state. Contrary to the conventional approaches, it claims that any social order or its political scaffolding, the state, is always incomplete and we need to develop cognitive maps to better understand that incompleteness. It reflects on the social practices, processes and patterns that evolve as a non-linear result of three sets of factors: those that are historical, external, and elite-driven. Three Central Asian states - Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan - are examined here comparatively as case studies, as Central Asia represents an interesting terrain to challenge conventional understanding of the state. Specifically, the book captures a paradox at hand: how come three states, which made different political, economic, cultural, and social choices at the outset of their independence in the 1990s, have ended up as so-called “weak states” in the 2000s and onwards? This puzzle can be better understood through looking at the relationship among three main sets of factors that shape state-building processes, such as history, external actors, and local elites. This book applies an interdisciplinary approach, combining political anthropology, political economy, sociology, and political science. It helps conceptualize and understand social and political order beyond the “failed state” paradigm

• State theory
• civil society
• International Relations
• Political Anthropology
• International Development and post-conflict reconstruction
• failed states
• Critical Security Studies
• Water Management
• Border Management
• Security and Development Nexus
• Asia

• Department of Politics and Security, OSCE Academy, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

  Viktoria Akchurina

Viktoria Akchurina is Senior Lecturer at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. Her research focuses on state-building in Central Asia and the Middle East, comparatively. She is an author of a number of academic publications on the elite formation, power and hegemony, the incomplete state, security and radicalization, border and water management in central Eurasia. She co-edited a Special Section on ‘Power and Competing Regionalism in a Wider Europe’ in Europe-Asia Studies. In her previous capacity as a researcher at TRENDS Consulting in Abu-Dhabi, she published a number of policy papers on the Belt and Road Initiative in the Middle East and conducted research on Russian foreign policy in Syria.

Previously, Viktoria taught at the MA program in Peace and Development at Dauphine University in Paris and conducted research on borders, informal cartography, and the "lost cities" in Eurasia at the Centre of "Geopolitics of Risk" at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.